Quite normal, maybe it does not deserve a full story on DanDanDin, but who knows…

It all starts out outside the Toei Studio Park in Kyoto. It is a park/film studio where hundreds of movies and TV series are recorded, set in the samurai era.

The surroundings do not offer many options, but being a bit far from the city center, and having gone there on purpose, I decided to explore the whole area, making a “discovery”.

I see a “Lawson 100”, a little different from the normal ones.

The Lawson are small shops, called コンビニ, convenience stores, which have virtually everything you need for everyday life. Being small, it doesn’t offer a big variety, but they have a solution for every eventuality. I made some videos, but I do not remember if I published them… I have hundreds of videos waiting forever to be edited/published…

In short, normally a Lawson has two characteristics:

The corporate colors are white and blue

Every object for sale has its price

Instead, this is the “Lawson 100”, from outside:

(I was so ecstatic that I forgot to take photos or videos of it, this comes from Google Maps…)

Green and white, with the 100 doing a wink 😉

Never seen before. Intrigued, I enter the store, and I noticed something weird.

Then I see them there, on the shelf. Three socks for 100 yen, one size. Beautiful! I had already taken a package of 5 for 500 yen from GU (a clothing chain) and they were of excellent quality, but a pair of socks is always useful. I’ll take them right away!

On my Xiaomi Mi 5X, after installing one of the BETA weekly updates, a new feature appeared: unlocking the phone with facial recognition, iPhone X style.

Intrigued, I immediately activated it, but I had with very low expectations: while on iPhone X there is a 3D scanner that can recognize an “alive” face from a photo, on other phones is much more “basic”, since it uses the front camera.

Anyway, I do not have anything important on the phone, so the possibility that someone else can unlock the phone by showing a picture of me is not a big deal.

I immediately saw how convenient it was: I raise the phone, the screen turns on automatically, I look at it, it unlocks. Fantastic. Indeed, better than iPhone X, because you do not have to swipe your finger to confirm, and anyway, I could always unlock via fingerprint on the back sensor! The best of both worlds!

Then one evening I went out and the phone unlocked in an almost completely dark room. Wow, in this room it’s so dark that I can not recognize people with my own eyes, how the phone could manage this?. Then I thought… an iPhone X uses some kind of Kinect (Apple acquired the company that invented the Kinect sensor a few years ago) and manages to see in 3D in absolute darkness, while my phone uses a common photo sensor, not able to see in the dark.

What a Kinect can see in the dark

I tried the recognition on an Asian face and it unlocked! I had low expectations on security, but I did not imagine that he was totally incapable of distinguishing an Asian face from a European face!

Cryptocoins! No, Coin Crypt it’s a 4-5 years old game, that I got as a gift on Steam a few years ago.

How does it work: without a tutorial, you’re on a Pacific island, on the ruins of an ancient coin-based civilization. Soon, you have to understand that some coins can be used for attacks, other for defense, some of them heal, and some… have just a monetary value: so you have to prepare a strategy, don’t waste coins on weak monsters (no coins = game over), spend them in donations, and so on.

If you have an Xbox controller the interface it’s very easy, you OK with the right trigger, you choose the coins with the buttons shown on screen. If, like me, you use a Dualshock 4, either you have already got muscle memory about the different buttons (X = square, A = X, and so on), either you’re going to suffer a bit.

Technically the game is easy: there are three random levels, a final boss, and victory! Basically, it all depends on your luck/patience/strategy/choices.

The more you play, the more coins you can spend to unlock other characters, with many different personalities. For example, the ghost will find more coins, but will lose them on the road; the monkey will use all the coins in the hand during a battle, it can be a good thing, but also a disaster.

As a game, it’s easy to learn, but hard to master: in order to fully completing it you need a lot of patience and time. If like me, you have small patience and less time… after a few game overs, you’re going to be bored.

There’s also a daily challenge, all the players try the same world with the same character, competing for the highest score.

About crypto coins in coin crypt… during a game, you can find a computer. If you spend a coin on it you can mine a crypto coin… with a value, like almost in the real value, totally volatile and unpredictable, as it changes randomly at the beginning of the level.

Since I got the crazy idea to radically change this website engine, from Windows+mojoPortal to Linux+PHP, I noticed that I need a LOT of more CPU time to generate each page:

It uses a lot of processor time, but requests are much more faster… if the page has been “cached”:

In my experiments I saw that the forum that I was using (bbpress) slows down the site a lot: it loads a lot of useless javascript in all pages, and doesn’t allow “caching” the pages. So I temporarily disabled the forum, searching for a temporary solution. I’m thinking to use Discourse

On the Japanese gaming consoles there are hundres of games about Majiang (or Mahjong, 麻雀, 麻将, マージャン, according where it’s played). The game it’s totally different to the “Mahjong” we know in the west, that “puzzle/find couples”, but it’s some kind of poker, I never understood the rules.

I always wanted to play this game, but I was unable to learn the rules, so I asked to a Japanese friend to play to Mahjong Fight Club DS – Wi Fi Taiou for Nintendo DS ed I recorded the gameplay:

Unfortunately, I didn’t record mic input, it would have been much more interesting…

A 7 days Japan Rail Pass costs 29110 yen (about 240 euro, depending on the exchange rate). It may seem expensive: is it worthwhile?

It all depends on our travel plans: if we’ll just visit the outskirts of Tokyo, it is a waste of money, even going to Yokohama, Kamakura, Saitama, we’ll never would spend this amount.

But, if we plan to visit also Osaka, we can see on Hyperdia that the pass is cheaper than a return ticket!

Obviously, there are cheaper ways to go to Osaka, for example, a night bus costs about 8000 yen, and even a plane ticket Haneda => Itami costs much less. Or you can try to take the train without reservation saving fifty euro each way.

But the Shinkansen is much more comfortable for many ways: in 3 hours you arrive, without bother to check-in, book months in advance, depart at odd hours, transfer to airports, overweight luggages, etc …

With the JR Pass you can take all trains except the Nozomi (the fastest Shinkansen), berths, and private companies trains (eg: the Seibu-Shinjuku line, Seibu-Ikebukuro, Keio, subway, etc.), so you can save even with a simple, one week trip like this:

Narita Express from Narita Airport to Tokyo (2630 yen)

Transfers on the Yamanote line to visit Shinjuku, Shibuya (200 yen for each trip)